Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation pages?

Using new media technologies was an essential part of our project. These technologies allowed us to communicate with one another and share important information. They were useful in all stages of the project and so were highly significant. Furthermore, technological convergence made our work easier and cross media convergence was central to our marketing campaign.

Stage 1 - Research and Planning

Web 2.0

Over recent years, there has been a significant proliferation of the Internet which means that today there are millions of interconnected networks which can be accessed by billions of people all over the world. Furthermore, the speed at which we can access this information is extremely quick and instant. We have made full use of the Internet in the research and planning stage of our project.

This video has cool editing effects that
influenced our video

Youtube - This was extremely useful in the early stages of the project as is the biggest platform for music videos in the world. Therefore, it was a key site to draw inspiration from for our video. By looking at other existing videos, we were able to see the conventions of music videos and get a better idea about what we could do for our video. For instance, we really liked certain effects in Calvin Harris' "How Deep is Your Love" and this became an influential to our video. Furthermore, the range and availability on YouTube is so vast, meaning we could look at such a variety of videos which was useful as we could look through at the genres that we were interested in, or the videos of any artist tha we liked. Finally, this website was extremely useful for uploading videos to, via the media department's YouTube channel. For example, we could upload our steal-o. 

Beyonce's  videos were inspirational
in terms of her performance/choreography

We didn't just look at music videos, we also
looked at dance videos to get ideas for our routine

Google Images

Google Images - This site was extremely useful for researching different styles and looks for our band. There are so many images available of artists and clothing which was really useful as a point of visual reference for D4MES' styles. It was also useful for when we were planning our promo shots, as we could look at how other girl bands were positioned. 

Fifth Harmony had various promo shots that we could reference

Rita Ora was one of the inspirations for my outfit

Blogger - Blogger has been a very useful way to document all our research and present it in a coherent way. Furthermore, in terms of the group, it meant we could each express our own opinions and personal influences, as we do not all like the same thing. So having our own blog meant that we could both have our own ideas and express the preferences of the group as a whole.

Gift and I had very different initial ideas and influences

Mobile Technology

Portable devices nowadays are extremely convenient and often technologically converged meaning we can use them to perform a range of tasks. For instance, we can use mobile phones to take picture, watch TV, navigate around the world and this is all in addition to communicating. The ability to communicate and take photos via mobile technology was very important for us.

We used it to plan/organise things

Whatsapp - Whatsapp was extremely useful for the group and became our main platform for communicating. We were able to instantly send and receive messages, as well as send media such as photos and videos, Communicating in this way meant that we could both organise ourselves and help one another out. 

Our Whatsapp group chat

We sent numerous pictures/images

Taking photos - Throughout the research and planning stage, we would each constantly take photos in order to document the process and as a way of providing evidence, which we knew would come in handy later on in the project. We could then send this to other members of our group via Whatsapp or email it to ourselves to use on our blogs. 

I took many pictures during this stage of the project

Stage 2 - Construction 

Hardware

This was what we mainly used in the production side of the construction stage. The hardware that we used was central to our project as it enabled us to get the set and footage that we wanted. 

Canon 5D Mark II - This was the camera that we used to film our music video.We only filmed in the studio which already made the task of using the camera easier. We were able to use the camera at different angles and in different positions thanks to the tripod and dolly. However, because it was light we were also able to hand hold the camera or use a shoulder strap. We also loved how amazing the quality of the camera was - 1080p HD, and an even better bonus was being able to enhance the more prominent lighting shots by changing the lens. We were also able to manually adjust the white balance and ISO functions as we shot the footage, ensuring that each shot looked the best it could. 

The main issue that we had with the camera was the problems with the auto focus, it would sometimes not work. Also, with the lens that improved the lighting for set ups such as the laser backdrop, the auto focus was not an option and so it was very difficult to keep it in focus all the way through the take. 

Lighting Desk - The lighting desk was crucial to our music video as it controlled the Arri 1000k lights which subsequently gave us the range of rich colours needed to connote of themes of love, lust and desire and make our video look fun, professional and appealing to our audiences. At first we all found the system complex to use, even after a demonstration by our technician. However, the more we practiced, the easier and quickert it got and the more confident we became. The most useful feature was definitely the memory log which enabled us to save our various lighting set ups and therefore get them up instantly for filming.

My group at work at the lighting desk

The main disadvantage of using the lighting desk was the fact that it was often very time consuming as it had to be done in order for us to shoot. Also sometimes we could not use the lighting desk unless there were two other people there e.g. one person to stand behind the camera, one person to stand in front of the camera and one person operating the desk. This is because sometimes we would have to adjust the lighting according to how it looked on the camera.

Software

This is what we used in the post production stage. The various software was instrumental to our project as it allowed us to present D4MES in the best way possible by making all three products look good. 

Adobe Premiere Pro - This was the software we used to edit our video and so it was extremely useful. It really helped that we'd all used the software before in previous media projects as it meant we were all confident in using it. It was very easy to use and enabled us to apply a variety of effects to our video and thus make it more engaging for our audience. The fact that we could have multiple track layers was perhaps the most useful feature of the program as it meant that we could comfortably make as many adjustments as we wanted.

Multi track layer format

I really enjoyed exploring the various effects available and I learned a great deal about selecting the best effect for a particular shot and how to make an effect look as cool as possible when it was applied to the clip. Grading was another key feature of the software that we used for our project. The tools we used were ProCamp and Three Way Colour Corrector. Grading enabled us to make D4MES and the video as a whole as good as possible and it was particularly important for enriching the various colours used and making the images more dynamic, consequently giving audiences a visual spectacle. It was important as the video needed to have a consistent and professional look throughout.  I felt very confident while grading as I had done it in previous media projects where it had proved to be one of my strengths. However, the process was slightly longer this time round as the various set ups and backdrops used for our video meant that we could not copy and paste the same setting in every clip. Ultimately, we had to adjust each clip individually, which was time consuming, however, the end result meant that the effort paid off. 

Rendering files 

The main disadvantage we found with using Premiere Pro was the rendering process. In order to view any effect on our footage in real time, it meant that we had to render it first. Considering we used so many effects, this occurred quite frequently. It often took a long time and meant that we had to wait.

Photoshop toolbar

Adobe Photoshop - This was the software that we used to create our album digipak. The other members of my group all had previous experience on this program due to having used it in projects before I had joined Latymer and therefore I was the only person without any experience. This meant that I took a step back and mainly watched the others. However, despite having no previous experience, I was able to do some things and so using Photoshop proved to be very valuable and a real learning curve. I learned many things such as how to use the paintbrush to colour in and erase an image. I also learned that retouching images was not a simple process but rather a time consuming and complex one, but it had to be done to enhance the shots of the band that went onto the website. The wide range of tools was very useful and meant that we had a lot of creative choice. However, we had an issue of the program occasionally crashing in the middle of what we were doing and there were rare occasions where work would get lost as a result. 

Paintbrush tool

Web 2.0

Different features that we could add 

Wix  - This was what we used to create our website. I would say that this was the software program that I personally did the most work on and was the most responsible for and I really enjoyed using it. Arguably the greatest bonus of Wix was that we could create our website to a professional level for free. It was very easy to use and contained a wide variety of apps and features that we could add to each page and make the website as interesting as possible. It also enabled us to achieve a synergistic marketing campaign as we were able to connect the website to our various social media accounts and to YouTube. Therefore we were able to make the website the social hub. The only issue that we found with Wix was that the preview feature did not always work and so we could not always see what certain pages looked liked outside of the editor view.

D4MES' Twitter page 

Twitter - This was our main social media account that we used for D4MES. It is very useful that nowadays the technological convergence of smart phones means that sites such as Twitter can be easily accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world. Therefore, Twitter was a great way to reach out to our audiences and attract fans. Furthermore, Twitter is an example of cross media convergence - it is possible to post a range of media on one platform and thus it was possible to interact with audiences and make our profile as interesting as possible. We have posted a range of things including information about competitions and photos. 

Stage 3 - Evaluation

Web 2.0 

Editing a Prezi presentation

Prezi - This enabled me to create eye-catching and visually engaging presentations. The fact that it could be embedded into my blog was very useful as it meant that the presentation could be instantly viewed. It is a fun way of reading information as you don't just have to scroll down and read paragraphs of text. I could present my work in an efficient and concise way as I was able to write in bullet points and combine it with plenty of images. Overall, the preset templates that are available on Prezi meant that I could easily and quickly present neat and engaging presentations.

How I uploaded a presentation to Slideshare

Slideshare - This enabled me to display presentations. I was able to embed this into my blog and thus allow the information to be viewed instantly. It meant that rather than just take pictures of slides I had already created on Microsoft Powerpoint, I could incorporate the whole thing into my blog. It therefore meant that it was not necessary to scroll down to read information but conveniently flick through instead.

Make a gif - This enabled me to visually refer to my various music video influences, without always having to post up the whole video. I could pick specific parts of a video that influenced me and show that. It also enhances the visual appeal of my blog by filling it with exciting and different images.

Converting a YouTube video to gif format on makeagif.com

Qualitative data from Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey - This was very useful in gathering audience feedback in a clear and efficient way. It was very easy to use and extremely helpful as it meant we could create the survey, have people give their responses and have their responses summarized and presented in a clear way. For instance, we did not have to calculate how many people were male or female - Survey Monkey did this and gave us the qualitative data we needed.


Overall, new media technologies were vital in all stages of the project and helped us to carry out each task more easily and accomplish things more efficiently. The technology was not only beneficial in producing our music video but also in the planning stages which enabled us to have the necessary preparation for making the video and the evaluation stages where presentation was very important. 

Construction Post 6: Website post-production

The software we used to create our website was Wix. Once again, this task required a lot of our time and a lot of effort.

Summary of the process

1. We used a template to get our website started. We thought this would save time and as we knew that we wanted a black style, we liked the look of the template.
2. We decided what pages we needed to have and what would go on the navigation bar, and this was based on our flat plan 
3. We started to create each page and fill the website with information, links, music and photos 
4. We made the website as interactive as possible 

Useful tools

Here is some evidence of some important things we did in the process of making the website:

Adding content to our 'meet the girls' page

Adding content to our music page

Adding content to our tour page 

Adding content to our news page

The store page took a long time:

Overview of the store page process

List of the products that we created

Changes we made:

• Layout of meet the girls page
• Adding contact page 
• Not using rollover images(experiment)

Our original 'meet the girls' page had all four of us on the same page and was arranged in a box-like fashion. There was nothing particularly eye-catching about it and it was all very compact. Therefore we thought that we should rearrange the layout of this to make it more interesting and visually appealing. As you can see below, the new layout is much better as we have a page each and there is more to see. For example, we all have a large photo of ourselves in black and white as the background. Furthermore, the new questions - "What's your biggest fear?" in my opinion sounds better than the old one - "What superpower would you have?"

Therefore, there was no need to keep the rollover effects I had added to the old layout of the page. I had done this to make the old page more interesting but as we found a way to make it even better, there was no need to use rollover images at all. Moreover, when we showed the new layout to our target audience focus group. they agreed that the rollover image effect would be too much. However, this experiment was still valuable as I learnt how to add this effect on this website.

Rollover image effect

Finally. we added a contact page as a result of some feedback from a teacher, who said that this is something that most professional artists' websites have. We decided that we needed to follow the conventions of other websites and so this page cannot be located on the navigation bar. Instead, you have to click "contact us" at the bottom of the page. There are details of our record label - Soho Records but also Universal Music Group UK. I ensured that the number we used for our company was a fake one.

Problems and solutions 

My Contributions

• Whilst other members of the group focused on the album cover, I would say that I took a lead role in the creation of the website. I think that editing the website was one of my strengths and I felt much more confident using this software.
• I wrote a lot of the content for the website. This included: the tour page, the meet the girls page, creating the 12 products for the store page,the music page, the news page and helping with the contact page. I also edited some of the photos that we used. 
• We could improve the website by perhaps making it even more interactive. For example with the meet the girls page, we could have animated the pictures. We also could have added more links to other sites, for example iTunes to make it more conventional.

Construction Post 5: Digipak post-production

We used Adobe Photoshop to create our digipak. 

It took a very long time to create, which I had not expected. Below there is some information on how we made it.

Our album cover required a template which can be seen above. The green area represented the space for our photo, the blue line represented space for any text to flow over and the red line represented the cut off point - if something passed this, it would not get printed. 

Me working on the album cover 

The Basic Process

1. Creating a flat plan to use as a guideline 

2. Editing the photo for the front/back cover

3. Editing the background for the front/back cover

4. Adding text to the front/back cover

5. Editing the photo/background for the inside cover

Useful tools

Front&back panels

We made some changes as a result of our own observations and also those of our target audience. These included:

• Changing the background
• Changiing the image of our front cover
• Changing the framing of our front image
• Changing the font of our name 
• Changing the colour of my jumper

The initial problem that we had with the original image was that there was too much space between Gift and Angela. Our target audience focus group also observed this. Although we overcame this by removing the background and then splitting the image of us into two so that we could move it closer together, something still was not right.

After having done some research, we decided that it was more conventional to have an image of us in a smarter outfit. At first I was sceptical as I thought it was better to bring out our street vibe, however, seeing as bands similar to us such as 'Neon Jungle' also followed this convention made me change my mind.

Inspiration: Neon Jungle 

Therefore we used our smart outfit. Originally it was a long shot but some feedback from our target audience was that there was too much space surrounding us. As a result the image we went with was more of a mid shot which actually works out better as you can see our faces more clearly.

Our target audience focus group was not keen on the 'D4MES' font and said that it was too faint. Therefore, we decided to use a bolder colour and add a black outline. For the back cover, everyone really liked my outfit but by chance, all the others had chosen an outfit where they were wearing either dark colours such as black or white. Therefore we decided to change the colour of my jumper to grey so that there was a consistent look.

The colour of my jumper changed from
red to grey in order to match the others' clothes 

A new skill I learnt: using the brush tool to paint

Inside Panels

We also changed aspects of the inside panels as a result of feedback from our target audience and our own observations. These changes included:

• Changing the picture
• Changing the background

Original photo/background

The first picture we chose for our inside cover was one where we were all standing. Although we all liked our positioning in the photo, in terms of height, we thought there were better photos to depict the closeness of our group. Therefore, we chose a better photo (which can be seen below) that reflects not only the chemistry within our group but also our street style.

Final photo

Our target audience also picked up on another issue with our inside panel idea: the background. Some comments that we got were that it was confusing as to what the link to the front panels was. I also felt that it was quite dull and unattractive. Therefore, we reassessed the background and thought a lighter colour would be better with patterns and so in the end we ended up using a grey geometric background.

Final photo/background

We also edited the photo in a black and white style and added our names to make it more interesting to look at. The inside panel is now much more similar to the front in terms of colour and so our album has a consistent look.

Experimental inside cover 

At one point when we were thinking of ideas to re-design our inside panel, Gift experimented with colours and similar effects to our final album cover. An important thing I learned in this process is the importance of experimenting to improve a product.

Problems and Solutions

My Contributions

I found creating the digipak the hardest and most challenging task as I have not used Photoshop properly before and so as a result I found it very confusing. The other members of my group were much more experience than I was and so I took a step back in order for them to put their skills to use. I still contributed but did not take a lead role in this particular task. What I did in the task:

• Helped to choose photos
• Helped to research and find backgrounds
• Helped to remove the backgrounds of the photos
• Helped to paint the photos

I believe I could improve by learning how to use Photoshop properly so that I could do more things and do them faster. I also would like to improve on my confidence and perhaps next time try and do things I am not sure how to do - perhaps by looking up tutorial videos on YouTube. As a group think we worked very hard despite being very tired as a result of how much time this task required. Next time we could improve by making the flat plan even more detailed so that we knew more about what we wanted initially which would have likely saved us time, as it would have meant making less changes.